Monday, September 28, 2015

A few days ago, Trey wrote about his preferences in play for gaming, after being instigated by known rabblerousers and troublemakers Jack and Paul. This looks like a neat exercise, so I figured I'd jump in.

So what do I want out of games, tone- and presentation-wise?

"What do you want?"

I like my characters to fall into the "mercenary heroism" box - they're trying to strike it big and succeed personally, but they're also willing to lend a hand and help out those in need. The convenient thing here is that this sort of character can mesh decently with the standard Vancian scoundrel that seems to serve as the baseline for OSR play. (A sidebar to this is that I also want there to be factions and groups who aren't wholly corrupt and awful; I want there to be someone, even flawed someones, I can root for and support.)

I enjoy a wide variety of tone in terms of what I play, but I strongly prefer running games with very high potential lethality. I try to leaven this a bit; I don't want to have a character meatgrinder situation, and I want to make sure players aren't feeling disheartened or frustrated with the game. There's something that's particularly compelling about the idea of the survival horror situation, with everyone desperately attempting to stay alive and the idea that nobody is safe, and I do gravitate towards that.

I crave weird unusual worlds with depth and internal coherence. I want games to feel like their settings are lived-in, that there are people present rather than Background NPCs.

I really love tense dungeon exploration. There's something special about creeping along at low level trying to make sure the next room, monster, trap, or whatever doesn't kill you - about frantically improvising something, anything, to jury-rig your way out of trouble. I'm perfectly happy with other environments, and do relish the chance to engage with NPCs in a city environment rather than the confines of the dungeon, but...man, sneaking along. It's great.

I like roleplay and funny voices and having that roleplay drive the action, rather than loading that all onto the result of a Cha check or equivalent. I don't want that for every single interaction ("Holy crap you're going to be haggling over another cloak?") but for the major significant ones, I want the focus to be on the players and their creativity rather than the PC's stats.